Legal News

NYT: Lawyer Layoffs Hit Georgia?s Public Defender System

By Dan Slater

Lawyer-layoffs may be coming to a government near you. On Friday, reports the NYT, the Georgia Public Defender Standards Council, which administers Georgia’s defender system, announced it would close the Metro Conflict Defender Office, one of four such offices in Georgia that handle cases in which it would be a conflict of interest for the local public defender’s office to represent more than one client charged with the same crime.

Often, when co-defendants in a criminal case turn on each other, the local public defender’s office can’t represent both defendants because doing so would create a conflict. Instead, public defenders from a special “conflict” office are called to help out.

The cuts, which are to take effect June 30, will effectively eliminate all conflict defenders for clients in superior and juvenile courts in metropolitan Atlanta. How do the numbers break down? The office employed 21 people, according to the Times, including 17 lawyers. Presently, they represent 1,850 defendants.

Yesterday, the county’s chief judge, Doris L. Downs, called the layoffs “irresponsible” and said they could cause a legal crisis. But the GPDSC says eliminating the office is necessary in a year when the state Legislature did not allot enough money for the defense of the indigent in Georgia. The state Legislature appropriated $5.4 million for conflict defenders for the coming fiscal year, a reduction from the $9 million appropriated for this year.

Asked how his office might cope in the absence of conflict defenders, Paul Howard Jr., the DA for Fulton County, said, with a hint of sarcasm: “We’re hoping, in the future, that if people are going to commit crimes in Fulton County, they’ll do it singly.”

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).